Self-Censorship Or Absolute Freedom?

The belief that artists should be given absolute freedom in creating their art is an important issue for several reasons. Firstly, if art is censored, then the intended message of the art is corrupted or lost. Self-censorship, on the audience’s part is a much better alternative as current systems of censorship are flawed. This essay will discuss reasons for advocating artistic freedom.

My first claim is that the artist’s intended message is changed because of censorship. An example would be the book/movie, ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ In the original book, there is a final chapter where the main character, who is a murderer and a criminal, decides that he should change his ways and stop killing people as he had done. He then changes and turns into

I will go into detail about what this means later, but I am going to present an example first. A good example would be the book ‘And Tango Makes Three’. The book is about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin, and becoming a family. The National Library Board (NLB) recently banned the book because it depicted alternative families, and because it ‘did not promote family values’. If parents did not want their child to read this, they could ‘self-censor’, while at the same time, not compromising the right of those who would like to read it. What this would mean is that if there was a piece of art, and we are able to achieve ‘art without censorship’, that people would then have to decide for themselves if they actually wanted to be exposed to it. That would mean that all art works should carry warnings or disclaimers to warn the consumers that the works may be potentially controversial. The audience would then have to decide if they wanted to go, and they could not complain if they did, because they would have been given fair warning, and they made the choice to be exposed. I think this would be more of a solution than anything, but I also think that it is people’s right to decide what they want or do not want to see. I think that if we used a system of self-censorship, art would thrive more, and people would be

I find that our system of censorship can easily be swayed by one opinion. The way we censor in Singapore, is that we have a board of people, each who represent different population majorities, to go for a viewing, and then decide if the material is offensive to them. This is under the impression that they represent the whole spread of the population, which is not the case, as this is all opinion based and personal. This is because the sample size used to represent certain groups is far too small. An example that I will use is the short film ‘Porn Masala’. It was released with a rating of 18, but a day after, there was a complaint sent in from one person, and the film was withdrawn, because it was supposedly ‘demeaning and offensive to Indians." There was a public outcry about this, and several months later, they finally rereleased it with a 21 rating, and a dubbing over the parts that were ‘offensive’. We can see that the system of censorship is heavily flawed, because one personal opinion can sway